


Old Scars

by fowo



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, Mild Gore, Violence, injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-19
Updated: 2016-11-19
Packaged: 2018-08-31 23:32:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8598130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fowo/pseuds/fowo
Summary: Spoilers for Dishonored 2. You're reading at your own risk.

Billie, about Daud.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I had to. It just needed to get out real quick.

Every year when the Month of Songs came around, Daud complained about his old scar itching. It was worse when the weather changed, when it got cold early. The old man would sit at his desk, fingers rubbing over his forehead and cheek, eyes glowering in their sockets like a live skull. 

Billie Lurk, young and full of energy, had never understood.

Meagan Foster did. Sometimes she thought her right hand hurt—although the limb was long rotten and nothing but food for the worms.

 

Losing it wasn't so bad. Oh, it had hurt alright. Hurt like a motherfucker, and bled. There was so much blood. Meagan—Billie had cried all the damn way back to safety. But it was just like the old man was right, even after so many years of being free and away from him.

 

Training her, he would never hold back. He was too fast, too big and too angry. He would shout at her, bark orders, and hurt her. Oh, how he hurt her. Never fatally, no—but every slash that would have killed her in a real fight was still a punch with the grip of the blade, a kick into her guts that made her gag and spit bile. In a fight against the City Watch, the Abbey, he told her as she knelt on the floor, holding on to her developing body and fighting against choking on her watery breakfast and her tears, they would not hesitate to slice her head off, or gut her and let her watch as her bowels spilled unto the gutter.

 

She knew he was right, but she loathed him anyway for his cruelty.

 

When it finally happened—when after so many successful jobs she accompanied him on, a watch officer put a bullet through her thigh, and Daud carried her back to safety because all she could do was cry and scream, she was surprised that he wasn't angry at her. She was angry at _herself_ , why wasn't _he_?

 

He pulled the bullet out of her flesh with his magic, and Billie thought she had a strong stomach, but seeing her blood seep out of the wound, see bits and pieces of torn and ruptured skin and muscle and sinew and veins nearly made her pass out. "Keep it together, kid," he growled. His left hand worked on her leg, and the right hand he had on her cheek, big and warm, gloves discarded. She could feel his sweat and the rough patches of callouses against her cheek. She sobbed and he rubbed his thumb over her cheekbone, grabbing her a little tighter. "It's not that bad," he murmured, and put the bloodied bullet into her shaking hands. "Keep it, as a reminder," he said, and from one of his pouches he produced threat and needle and a vial of shining red elixir, and he sew her thigh shut with six stitches that over the following weeks would fester and ooze puss and Billie couldn't walk for weeks and she would watch as Daud took Thomas with him instead on mission and she hated, _hated_ that the old man was always right about _everything_.

 

The wound healed, eventually. Be it Daud's magic, the elixir, or the Void's will, Billie never knew. But she kept the bullet in a small cigar tin with her few personal belongings under her pillow, until the day she left Dunwall, left Billie Lurk behind to become someone else. 

 

The scar left behind, ugly and almost faded on her skin, hurt sometimes when the weather was too cold. She would rub her hand over her leg and frown. She could see Emily looking at her, wondering why she was so exhausted by nothing, and the realization that she had become an _old woman_  made her smile a humorless smirk.

 

"To think I'd live to see forty," Daud had said one day, so many years ago. Billie had laughed at him, teased him for it, and he had chucked a book at her that missed by a mile.

 

Now, Billie counted the days until her own birthday. To think Daud had managed to keep it all up until so late in his life surprised her. She felt so tired, and sometimes she caught herself smoking on deck, staring into the distance, talking to herself, and it made her ache, because she _understood_ suddenly. She had thought it weakness then, when now, she realized how strong he really had been, holding it all together despite _everything_. 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
